A futuristic reimaging of the classic Greek myth, as a boy ventures through deep space and challenges the awesome power of black holes. The beauty of the book lies in the images, provided by NASA and the Hubble Space telescope, and printed on board rather than paper. On board pages.

A futuristic reimaging of the classic Greek myth, as a boy ventures through deep space and challenges the awesome power of black holes. The beauty of the book lies in the images, provided by NASA and the Hubble Space telescope, and printed on board rather than paper. On board pages.

From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

This is the story of Joe Carroll: fully paid-up member of the Greatest Generation, aviator, farmer, and handsome Irish charmer who radiated exuberance for life—a literal and metaphorical flying boy. With his head in the clouds, this American Icarus embodied all that was aspirational and attractive about mid-twentieth-century America, with its technical ingenuity, bravado, and its belief that the only way was up. But Joe was also a destructive, impulsive alcoholic; like many of that generation he held experiences and feelings close to the chest. Only on his deathbed did Joe acknowledge the pull of gravity, reaching out to his estranged family, reflecting over his life, and contemplating the afterlife. Depth journalist Pythia Peay is Joe’s eldest child. In this evocative, thoroughly researched, and sensitively drawn depiction of her father’s life and times, Peay maps the trajectories of this troubled, ordinary Joe, who as a youth had suffered a Dickensian twist of fate that would leave him a divided man. Guided by her father’s memories he recalled as he lay dying, Peay charts the ancestral rivers that led a working-class boy from depression-era Altoona, Pennsylvania, to the Air Transport Command and Brazil during World War II; post-War Buenos Aires, where Joe married an Argentine beauty with ancestral connections to the foundation of the United States; newly independent Israel, where he flew for El Al; the Missouri heartland in the 1950s, where he ran a farm and raised four children while traveling the world for TWA; the upheavals of the 1960s that would drive Peay and her father apart; Mexico, where her parents fled to escape their failing marriage; and, finally, Texas, where Joe got cancer and died. In narrating Joe’s life, Peay not only delineates the depths of the Depression, the highs of the “good war” and the psychological toll it exacted on the Greatest Generation, as well as the undercurrents that led to her family’s disintegration in the 1960s, but she unpacks the myths and archetypes that shape the United States—its perpetual restlessness and heroic individualism—in a journey that leads, intimately and movingly, to a final reconciliation with a dying patriarch and the ghosts of the past.

In The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin's most inspiring book, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art Everyone knows that Icarus's father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn't want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success? But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe. The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you're an artist, no matter what it says on your business card. Godin shows us how it's possible and convinces us why it's essential. 'If Seth Godin didn't exist, we'd need to invent him' Fast Company 'Seth Godin is a demigod on the web, a bestselling author, highly sought-after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger' Forbes Seth Godin is the author of thirteen international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about marketing, the ways ideas spread, leadership and change including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, The Dip and Tribes. He is the CEO of Squidoo.com and a very popular lecturer. His blog, www.sethgodin.typepad.com, is the most influential business blog in the world, and consistently one of the 100 most popular blogs on any subject..

In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks - a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars - World War I, Vietnam and Iraq - three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand. And each time, a war conceived in arrogance brought untold tragedy. In dazzling colour, Beinart portrays three extraordinary generations: the progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, the lonely preacher's son who became the closest thing to a political messiah the world had ever seen. The Camelot intellectuals who took America into Vietnam, led by Lyndon Johnson, who lay awake night after night shaking with fear that his countrymen considered him weak. And George W. Bush and the post-cold war neoconservatives, the romantic bullies who believed they could bludgeon the Middle East and liberate it at the same time. Like Icarus, each of these generations crafted 'wings' - a theory about America's relationship to the world. They flapped carefully at first, but gradually lost their inhibitions until, giddy with success, they flew into the sun. But every era also brought new leaders and thinkers who found wisdom in pain. They reconciled American optimism - our belief that anything is possible - with the realities of a world that will never fully bend to our will. In their struggles lie the seeds of American renewal today. Based on years of research, The Icarus Syndrome is a provocative and strikingly original account of hubris in the American century - and how we learn from the tragedies that result.

In volume two, students will watch as Copernicus's systematic observations place the sun at the center of our universe—to the dismay of establishment thinkers. After students follow the achievements and frustrations of Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes, they will appreciate the amazing Isaac Newton, whose discoveries about gravity, motion, colors, calculus, and Earth's place in the universe set the stage for modern physics, astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry. In the three-book The Story of Science series, master storyteller Joy Hakim narrates the evolution of scientific thought from ancient times to the present. With lively, character-driven narrative, Hakim spotlights the achievements of some of the world's greatest scientists and encourages a similiar spirit of inquiry in readers. The books include hundreds of color photographs, charts, maps, and diagrams; informative sidebars; suggestions for further reading; and excerpts from the writings of great scientists.

This series featuring South African detective Benny Griessel “is one of the high points of contemporary crime fiction” and “Icarus is his best yet” (The Guardian). When a plastic-wrapped corpse is found amidst the sand dunes north of Cape Town, it doesn’t take long for the police to identify the body as Ernst Richter—the tech whiz behind MyAlibi, an Internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide their affairs. The murder quickly becomes the subject of fierce media speculation, with questions swirling about potential motives and perpetrators. Maybe it was one of MyAlibi’s countless jilted spouses, or perhaps an aggrieved client. With a spotlight shining on the investigation, detective Benny Griessel’s boss wants him on the case—and he won’t take no for an answer. Before the week is out, a connection to a storied family winery comes to light and adds another layer of tension. But Griessel will have to make sure his suspicions are beyond the shadow of a doubt—or it might be his head on the chopping block. “Meyer . . . has long been hailed as South Africa’s greatest crime writer. Icarus places him firmly in the top international league.” —The Times (London) “Meyer has perfected structure and pace, reveals and red herrings, chapter beats, plot and subplot but he enriches the story with fascinating detail.” —The Sunday Times “A meticulously crafted portrait of modern-day South Africa, Icarus is a spellbinding tour de force.” —New York Journal of Books